About Mosaic

Mosaic is trying to achieve an increase in ethnic minority visitors to the National Parks by building sustainable links between ethnic minority community leaders and nine of the National Parks and YHA.

Targets

Between 2009 and 2012, Mosaic will:

• Recruit and train 200 Community Champions to promote the National Parks
• Develop 20 local groups of Champions, in 20 cities across England, and help these groups become locally self-sufficient
• Ensure that at least another 4,000 individuals from ethnic minority communities have a direct experience of a National Park
• Reach another 40,000 individuals from ethnic minority communities indirectly
• Assist the YHA all 9 National Parks in England to reach out and build relationships with ethnic minority communities

Organisational Change

60 years after the legislation that allowed the designation of National Parks for the benefit of the public, National Park Authorities (NPAs) are still working to ensure that they meet their second purpose: to promote opportunities for the public understanding and enjoyment of the Parks. Organisational change is not about forcing people to go to a National Park; it is about ensuring that all people have an equal opportunity to do so.

Mosaic will help partner organisations make changes across the organisation, from high-level strategic planning to practice on the ground. For example:

Communications materials: promotional materials about the National Parks are often not distributed in urban centres; or if they are, they might not be going to those places where ethnic minorities are more likely to pick them up such as cultural centres. Mosaic will help inform the NPA’s about where leaflets might be best distributed.

Employment and volunteering: currently most employees and volunteers at NPA’s are not from a diverse background, and most adverts for vacancies tend to go to publications not read by many ethnic minorities. Mosaic helps identify other possible places to advertise vacancies, to make sure that a more diverse group of people are aware and able to apply.

The Future

Mosaic has worked successfully for over 10 years building links between Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) communities, the National Parks and the Youth Hostels Association (YHA). Based on the success of the work to date the Mosaic team would like to assess if the “Mosaic model” could be extended to another priority group: young people.  This has been initiated in the South West of England through a one year action research pilot that started in May 2009.
 
We will focus on young people between the ages of 16 and 25 years from some of the South West’s most deprived urban communities, primarily in Plymouth, Exeter, Barnstable and Bristol. We will work with young people from a range of backgrounds, though with a particular emphasis on those individuals who face additional barriers to accessing the opportunities offered by the National Parks and the YHA.